Slack / Private Message Drop — page 832

WashPost has totally gone off the deep end. "Did some byproduct of the research leak, or did workers become inadvertently infected? Was the research carried out in less protected BSL-2 laboratories instead of the more secure BSL-4? Did Dr. Shi successfully manipulate a virus in the lab to add genetic features boosting affinity for human cells, as science journalist Nicholas Wade has suggested in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists? These and other questions have been met with stout denials and roadblocks from China. In response to the Science letter, which called for opening records of research labs, Dr. Shi said, "It's definitely not acceptable," and, "Who can provide an evidence that does not exist?" That brings us no closer to identifying the pandemic's origins. If the laboratory leak theory is wrong, China could easily clarify the situation by being more open and transparent. Instead, it acts as if there is something to hide." [shared file(s): Opinion _ Two possible theories of the pandemic's origins remain viable. The world needs to know. - The Washington Post.pdf] [2021-05-18 07:06:13] [Robert Garry] https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/05/the-stakes-of-finding-covid-19s-origins [2021-05-18 07:11:39] [Robert Garry] Again the Politifact article - "The lab leak theory is distinct from the hypothesis that gain-of-function research created the new coronavirus, said Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The lab leak theory "can be as simple as a *researcher being infected by an animal or even another infected person* in remote areas, and then bringing it into one of the most densely populated cities on Earth." The gain-of-function hypothesis supposes both that a virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute and that scientists there tampered with it in ways that could have made it more infective or deadly." [2021-05-18 07:14:07] [Robert Garry] So, if a virologist takes a field trip to Southern China and gets infected *FROM ANOTHER PERSON* that is somehow a Lab Leak. On the basis of this we want to shut down virologists and BSL3/4 labs. Why is this lunacy given an credence whatsoever? [2021-05-18 07:20:56] [Andrew Rambaut] Lunacy. What if it was a botanist or a palaeontologist? [2021-05-18 07:28:31] [Kristian Andersen] This is good - let them go down these crazy paths since it makes the bloomshitters look even dumber as we continue to learn more about how this _actually_ emerged. [2021-05-18 07:54:50] [Robert Garry] "What if it was a botanist or a palaeontologist?" Shut them all down! Fieldwork of ANY kind is too dangerous [says the guy who works with Lassa and Ebola blood samples at hmmmm BLS2+ in Africa]. [2021-05-18 08:12:02] [Andrew Rambaut] The more they define 'lab escape' as just anything that involves a virologist in someway the less likely it is that it was lab escape because virologists are generally outnumbered by almost every other subdivision of the population. [2021-05-18 09:10:24] [Robert Garry] I think Dr. Quay missed the points but FWIW. Not sure why he can't post.... Dr. Garry- here is a single slide of my approach for your thoughts and comments: